Category: Barely Home Companion - Dan Fiorella: Writer @ large

Dan Fiorella

Barely Home Companion - Face the Conundrum (May '04)

5/19/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

PHC's "Later on most of these Public Radio Stations" bits were very freeing. It was a real chance to jump out of the context of the show and do anything. I got to do it on my first time out, Abbott & Othello. Around this time, I was working on a pilot series, "Where's the Party?" a talk show, where the premise was a swinging party at a rich guy's penthouse; Playboy After Dark meets Fernwood Tonight. And at one point we were struggling with a way to do actual sketch-sketches and not just "party bits." Someone mentioned a TV set. A party goer could be in a corner watching TV and we could do anything on that TV; a news parody (which I did), sit-coms, sports, anything. It was our launching pad out of the single set. And could be filmed and presented as such (ala Monty Python) verses the taped party scenes.

Anyway, this sketch was a re-working of some jokes that I had kicking around that I never quite found the right set-up for. Maybe this wasn't it either, but it appealed to my contradian side. Also, I think the idea of parodying those Sunday morning news shows as they devolved into these bizarre attempts at "gotcha" attitudes and odd "what-if" scenarios questions. I think it just never jelled enough for PHC's purposes and they neglected to use it.

Face the Conundrum

Barely Home Companion - 30th Anniversary (May '04)

5/12/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

What an epic sketch this was. I hit every character, every callback, every cliche of a show celebrating an anniversary I could. Perhaps I was too much the outsider (EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME) for him to accept the idea of me submitting something like this. Maybe making fun of his bread & butter wasn't the wisest move. Maybe it was too pop-culture-y. Or worse, too dated pop-culture-y (Tiny Tim jokes? Really?) Maybe sending an incomplete sketch was undercutting myself...

Apparently there's a reel missing between PHC in Space and GK's finish. It looks like I was going to write something there, but it just goes from GK line to GK line.

I don't know how I forgot to put in sound effects jokes. The penguin joke is one GK told often on the show. The voice impressions were all regulars. It was a sketch that had to cover a lot of ground and I think it worked, but what do I know?

30th Anniversary

Barely Home Companion - Us Guys at the Shore (June '04)

5/12/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Every so often, PHC would travel to Ocean Grove, New Jersey, which is part of the Jersey short. They would do the show from this huge, old auditorium built right on the beach. Again, since he was approaching my neck of the woods, I pulled out a Jersey shore sketch that I had written. I have written about this sketch before as it was preformed by the comedy troupe Style Without Substance. It's a funny sketch and did well in front of audiences. It was a long shot getting PHC to do it. It's not appealing to his demographics at all. And GK doesn't strike me as a beach-guy. But, it was the Jersey shore (I changed the title from "at the beach" to "at the shore"), it was funny and I pulled out the sight gags for radio, so why not?

Us Guys at the Shore

Barely Home Companion - Nose Staple (May '04)

5/5/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

When I pulled this out and started to read it, I thought, "Yeah, this is gross. I get why they didn't go for it." But now having read the whole thing, it's really very wacky and goofy. And the long fingernail joke goes back to my college days about an accident involving nose-picking and the Guiness book of records for the world's longest fingernails. I use the audio well. It's silly and quick and is a parody of medical commercials. I don't know why PHC looked down their nose at it.

Nose Staple

Barely Home Companion - On Assignment (Apr. 04)

4/28/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

The war in Iraq was in full swing (along with some other odd nations) and the news was handling it like it was ratings gold; special reports, imbedded reporters, all USA all the time. Another hook was the idea of news reporters being "on assignment" which was a catch-all phrase meaning "none of our business." It was a short bit, but it was a bit worth submitting.

On Assignment

Barely Home Companion - Nicknames (Apr. 04)

4/21/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

I don't have much memory of this bit. It's a good idea, but not really well executed. I really choked on the attempts at nicknames for comic effect. And some of it doesn't quite scan well these days. I like the dismissive end line, which calls back the premise of the sketch, where you can't be bothered to remember people's names.

Nicknames

Barely Home Companion - Jokes Illustrated (Apr. 04)

4/14/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

Okay, I think I lifted this joke from an old public access show I worked on, Big B's Traveling Sideshow (which I had done before). The show had done a bit called "Jokes Illustrated" (not written by me) which did the old time "Masterpiece Theater" bit to old jokes. I wrote a sequel to it, which was a bit more elaborate and never got to do it. So, I pulled it out here, when I might have been stuck for an idea. It's not a bad sketch but it didn't make the cut.

Jokes Illustrated

Barely Home Companion - DVDs (Apr. 04)

4/7/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

This is a cute little nothing that probably didn't have a chance to get on air. It's about TV and DVDs. There was just too much technology for GK to embrace here. But I had the idea. I wanted to keep submitting and, who knows, maybe some of it would wind up in another sketch. As I learned as time went on, there was always a lot of gray area to submissions and I always hit the email send button with my crossed fingers.

DVDs

Barely Home Companion - Trump Golf (Mar. 04)

3/3/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

People have forgotten (or ignore) what a object of ridicule Donald Trump was before he ever ran for office. SNL was mocking him back in the Phil Hartman days. By the 2000s, he was on "The Apprentice" and a regular target for Darrell Hammond. And we were piling on, too. I wrote up this piece about Trump after he announced some golf course was opening. I wrote the radio sketch and after PHC passed on it, I adapted it for Cracked magazine. The timing is close, the sketch is from February 2004 and it was in Cracked #364, which is dated September 2004, but usually comes out a month or two earlier. Cracked didn't have a long lead time, so if I re-wrote quickly enough, Cracked could have grabbed it quickly. They were kind of desperate for material during this era. It maybe have been too pop-culture-y for GK. Or Trump simply wasn't on Keillor's radar yet. I don't remember if they had done any Trump-related material back then. Nonetheless, here's the version I submitted to PHC:

Trump Golf

Barely Home Companion: House of Anchors (Feb. 04)

2/24/2023

From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion." I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell "prairie." It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there. But, like any other job, there were...things...

The store that offers only one type of odd product is a classic comedy situation. Think of Jackie Gleason and the different get-rich schemes he invested in (glow-in-the-dark wallpaper) or more on the nose, SNL, with it various mall stores, starting with the Tape Store that only sold scotch tape. It's been one of my go-to premises, from Christmas trees to gravy to glaze, that I would write up and send off. They never made the cut. I'm sure all the typos in the original submission of this didn't help my cause. I thought they were strong bits, some solid laughs but they never got on the air. Oh, well...

House of Anchors

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